This invention relates generally to the backup and recovery of data and information in enterprise content management systems, and more particularly to the centralized backup and recovery of content from distributed storage content systems and distributed storage areas in an enterprise network.
In today's global business environment, data and applications for large enterprises must be available on a 24×7 basis, and the data content must be consistent across the enterprise even as the volume of data constantly grows. This requires technologies to optimize application up time and meet storage and accessibility requirements, and to provide efficient data management systems. In today's business environment, enterprises typically employ enterprise-wide content management systems for managing and storing enterprise data and applications. Such systems usually include a content repository comprising multiple content systems, each managing one or more distributed storage areas. It is important to maintain the entire content management system in a consistent state across the enterprise, and to back up the system in order to permit recovery and/or restoration of files due to database corruption, disk failures or system failures. Content management systems generally include not only content storage areas in which application data and files are stored, but also database storage areas containing metadata associated with content in the content storage areas, as well as full text searchable indexes to facilitate recovery. Storage areas distributed across the enterprise on different remote hosts may have heterogeneous file and operating systems, and traditionally have had separate backup processes rather than a centralized backup/recovery system.
Managing the backup and recovery of multiple distributed storage areas of content systems in order to afford a consistent content repository is not a simple task. Not only must the various components in the distributed content systems be located and identified, the components must still be backed up in a particular coordinated order with respect to the other components such as a full text index (FTI) and a database (DB) to ensure consistency, as well as in a manner which minimizes the inaccessibility of the storage areas during the backup and/or recovery processes.
There is a need for providing backup and recovery systems and methods for backing up distributed storage areas that address the foregoing and other known problems of enterprise backup in recovery systems, and it is to these ends that the present invention is directed.